After years of friendly coexistence as tall-ass Chicago buildings with top-floor viewing areas that attracted tourists looking to test their acrophobia, the Willis (nee Sears) Tower threw down the gauntlet at its crosstown rival the Hancock Tower (technically, the John Hancock Center) by adding “The Ledge” — transparent boxes that jut out several feet from the building’s Skydeck, giving the visitor a truly knee-weakening experience. So what could the Hancock folks do to out-thrill the Willis’s boxes in the sky? How about a window that actually tilts you out over the Windy City’s streets?

Check out the above video just for the joy of seeing grown, presumably professional men and women scream in terror as they go on preview ride of Tilt on the Hancock’s 94th floor.

Personally, it’s not the tilting or the altitude that I dread, it’s the worry that my grip will loosen and I’ll sprawl forward onto the angled glass, making a public spectacle of myself and, knowing my klutzy luck, probably bloodying my nose in the process.

Though the Hancock is still not as towering as the Willis, this is definitely an escalation in the relatively blood-free Observation Deck War of Chicago, leading one to wonder what sort of Fear Factor-like response will come.

Perhaps those Ledge boxes at the Willis will become like the Six Flags Tower of Doom and suddenly descend at rapid speeds? Maybe the Tilt will start having Bucking Bronco nights, with the window’s operator trying to hurl people from the handrails. Maybe the Aon Center will… do something interesting for a change.

Many Americans legitimately use service dogs to help them get through life with post-traumatic stress disorder. The animals help their owners not by providing emotional support (they do that, too) but by disrupting terrifying stress reactions. This qualifies many PTSD animals as service dogs under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but some companies refuse to agree. Like American Airlines, which kicked an Army retiree and his dog off a flight between two cities in Florida.

The vet depends on his dog not just for psychiatric support, but to perform physical tasks as well. He had never had trouble taking her on planes before, and had been assigned a front row (bulkhead) seat where the dog could lie on the floor.

“The flight attendant told me she said the policy states no pets in bulk-heading,” he told CBS Miami. “I said, ‘again, Bella’s not a pet. She’s a service dog.’” Yet the man says that he and his wife were asked to get off the plane. They rented a car and drove home instead.

“I was beyond humiliated. My wife and I had to walk back down the jet-way past all the other passengers in complete, just, humiliation.”

American Airlines offered the family a refund, and told the veteran’s wife that they will re-train their staff on the concept of “service dog.”

When the FCC lets you off the hook with a warning after allegedly making 4.7 million illegal automated, recorded calls to cellphones, your best bet is to heed that warning or get out of the business. One company didn’t do either of these things and is now being fined $2.94 million.

While it’s legal to make political robocalls to landline phone numbers during an election campaign, it’s never legal to make a non-emergency robocall to a consumer’s wireless phone without his or her permission.

Dialing Services was warned that if it continued to make unlawful robocalls in the future, it could be held liable for penalties up to $16,000 per call.

Upon a second review, the FCC found that Dialing Services continued to engage in the same practice, making approximately 184 additional robocalls to consumer cellphone numbers. So the FCC has levied the maximum fine of $16,000 for each of those 184 calls, resulting in the $2.94 million penalty.

That may sound like (and is) a lot of money, but it’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in penalties Dialing Services could have faced if it had been fined for the millions of allegedly illegal calls it made before the FCC warning.

“Robocalling cell phones without a consumer’s consent is not only annoying, it is unlawful,” Travis LeBlanc, Acting Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, says in a statement.